


here i go, on my own

by thewalrus_said



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Don't copy to another site, Embarrassment, Gen, Pre-Canon, Where Was Celestino?, post-Sochi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23157346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewalrus_said/pseuds/thewalrus_said
Summary: Yuuri doesn’t realize how still Phichit has grown next to him until Phichit slowly reaches out and pauses the movie. “What?” Yuuri asks, turning to look at him. “Finally bored of this film?”Phichit doesn’t take the bait, which is the first clue that something is seriously wrong. The second is the look on his face as he stares at his phone, clearly horrified. He flips through a few somethings on the screen - pictures? - and grows even more serious, and then his eyes flick up to Yuuri. “What is it?” Yuuri asks quietly, fearing the worst.“It’s from Chris,” Phichit says.“Giacometti?” Yuuri knows him distantly; they’ve been at a few competitions together, the disastrous Grand Prix Final most recently. “What’s he sent you?”
Comments: 15
Kudos: 104





	here i go, on my own

**Author's Note:**

> For the server, who begged.

Yuuri doesn’t realize how still Phichit has grown next to him until Phichit slowly reaches out and pauses the movie. “What?” Yuuri asks, turning to look at him. “Finally bored of this film?”

Phichit doesn’t take the bait, which is the first clue that something is seriously wrong. The second is the look on his face as he stares at his phone, clearly horrified. He flips through a few somethings on the screen - pictures? - and grows even more serious, and then his eyes flick up to Yuuri. “What is it?” Yuuri asks quietly, fearing the worst.

“It’s from Chris,” Phichit says.

“Giacometti?” Yuuri knows him distantly; they’ve been at a few competitions together, the disastrous Grand Prix Final most recently. “What’s he sent you?”

Phichit opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then just says, “I’m so sorry,” and hands Yuuri the phone. On the screen is a picture of him, of Yuuri, but he’s... on a pole? Naked? Entwined with Chris? “What?” Yuuri whispers, looking back up at Phichit. “What is this?”

“There’s more,” Phichit says gently. “He sent three photos. I’m guessing you don’t remember?”

“I was so drunk,” Yuuri breathes as he flips to the other photos. More of the same. “Phichit, I was so drunk, I don’t remember this at all.”

“He sent them to me because he doesn’t have your number.” Phichit takes the phone back. “He thought you should know, in case you didn’t remember.”

Yuuri buries his face in his hands and proceeds to have a quiet anxiety attack. Phichit rubs a hand across his back and talks him through it, his familiar voice keeping Yuuri from slipping under entirely. “Okay,” Yuuri says, surfacing and rubbing his face. “Okay. This is the end of the world.”

“No it isn’t,” Phichit says immediately, still holding him. “This explains a lot, actually.”

“What?” Yuuri looks at him, betrayed. “What does it explain?”

“Where all your sponsors have gone, for a start,” Phichit says reasonably. “I know you think it’s just because you suck and are worthless, which, _no,_ but it looks like there’s a concrete reason.”

“I suppose,” Yuuri concedes, although privately he’s still sure his reasons are right. “I guess that makes sense.”

“This is not the end of the world,” Phichit repeats. “We’ll get you through this.”

“We’ll...” Yuuri trails off. “We. Phichit, I wasn’t at that banquet alone.”

“Fuck,” Phichit says emphatically, realization dawning on his face. “Where was Celestino?”

“I don’t know, I don’t... I don’t _remember,”_ Yuuri says, half-frantic. “He made me go to the banquet and then I didn’t see him again, I just... drank.”

Phichit’s head comes down to knock against Yuuri’s shoulder. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“It’s not his fault, I was a mess. It’s not his job to babysit me.”

“Yes it is, Yuuri, that’s _literally his job,_ to look after you, and that includes the banquet. Where the hell was he?”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, until Yuuri tentatively says, “If that’s true, if that’s his job and he let this happen, then...” He catches his breath and looks at his friend. “Phichit, do I have to fire him?”

Phichit’s face is creased in ways Yuuri’s never seen before. “Yes,” he says. “And so do I.”

“No,” Yuuri says, reaching out and taking Phichit’s hand. “He’s done nothing to you.”

“Yet,” Phichit says darkly.

“Please.” Yuuri squeezes his hand. “I won’t be able to go through with it if it means he loses eighty percent of his income, instead of just my share.”

Phichit scowls. “Fine. I won’t fire him, _yet,_ but he’s on watch and the moment he puts a toe out of line, he’s gone.”

“Besides,” Yuuri goes on, “maybe he has a good excuse. Maybe something pulled him away and that’s why he wasn’t there.”

“Or maybe he’d had a few too many and blacked out too.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Yuuri promises. “First thing tomorrow, and I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Make sure you do.” Phichit kisses him on the forehead. “You’ll be okay, Yuuri. This isn’t the end of you.”

Yuuri closes his eyes and leans into him, desperately trying to believe him.

\----

Yuuri gets to the rink early the next day, as soon as it opens. He’s waiting outside Celestino’s office when the coach arrives, coffee in hand. “Yuuri!” Celestino booms. “What’s got you up so early?”

“Can I have a word?”

“Of course, of course.” Celestino unlocks his office and holds the door open for Yuuri. “What can I do for you?”

They settle into chairs, Celestino behind his desk and Yuuri in front of it. Yuuri pulls out his phone. “Phichit received some... Some photos from Christophe Giacometti last night, and they have me extremely concerned.” He pulls up the pictures Phichit had forwarded him and passes the phone to Celestino.

The man’s face grows grave as he flicks through them. “Yuuri...”

“They’re from the banquet at Sochi last month,” Yuuri says. “Apparently I got a lot drunker than I realized.”

“Evidently,” Celestino says. He hands the phone back to Yuuri. “At least now we know where your sponsors went.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Yuuri says. His guts are churning, but Phichit’s voice in the back of his head cheers him on. “Why didn’t you already know about this?”

“What?”

“It’s your job to look after me at these things,” Yuuri says, twisting his fingers together under his chair where Celestino can’t see them. “Where were you? How could you let me get this out of control?”

“Yuuri, I...” Celestino looks like a man cornered. “All I can say is that I’m so sorry. I had a few myself at that event, and I must have been distracted.”

_Damn._ So much for a good excuse. “So distracted you missed me pole-dancing naked in front of all my sponsors?”

Celestino is sweating now and gaping at Yuuri. “I’m so sorry, Yuuri,” he says again. “It won’t happen again, I promise you.”

_Do it._ “No, it won’t,” Yuuri says. “Because you’re fired.”

“Yuuri, don’t be rash,” Celestino says quickly, reaching a hand across the desk as if to take Yuuri’s arm. “We’re a good team, you and me, we got you to the Final this year.”

“Where I crashed and burned and made a fool of myself,” Yuuri says. “I have to stay in Detroit until March to finish my degree, so I’ll finish out the season with you, but then it’s over. I’ll find another coach for next season.”

“Yuuri...” For a few horrible moments Yuuri thinks Celestino will keep fighting him on it, but instead he just sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Yes, I understand. I can only apologize again.”

“I appreciate it,” Yuuri says, lightheaded with relief. “I take responsibility for my actions, I’m not putting it all on you.”

“I understand,” Celestino repeats. “I let you down in a massive way. I’ll do my best to make sure the rest of your season makes up for any... embarrassment your reputation suffered at Sochi.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri nods at him and flees the office.

Phichit is waiting for him in the locker rooms. “Well?” he asks as soon as Yuuri walks in.

“He was drunk and ‘distracted,’” Yuuri says. “I fired him.”

“Good.” Phichit folds Yuuri in his arms and Yuuri clings to him. “You did the right thing, Yuuri. And you’ll have a great rest of the season, and you’ll win back all those sponsors, and you’ll recover. I promise.” Yuuri just hugs him tighter and doesn’t say anything.

\----

Yuuri does _not_ have a great rest of the season.

Nationals is a stilted, awkward mess of a cross-world flight and a total disaster on the ice. Yuuri can’t get out of his own head: Who else has seen the photos? Are the sponsors gossiping about him? Did that representative from the JSF give him a weird look because he was at the Sochi banquet?

His confidence, never high to begin with, had taken a hit after his failure at Sochi that it never recovered from, and he whiffs every jump he tries in competition, in both programs. Celestino, ever jovial even after being fired, winces when Yuuri’s scores and ranking come up after the free program. “Not your best,” he says, patting Yuuri on the shoulder. “You’ll get them next time.”

Next time, when he’s with a different coach. Assuming there is even a next time, after a last-place finish, so bad he scored lower than the junior champion. Yuuri just shakes Celestino’s shoulder off and goes to change.

To the surprise of no one, the JSF elects not to send him to Four Continents or Worlds, and Yuuri’s season ends in a quiet fizzle. Phichit buys him a cupcake the day it’s made official, which makes Yuuri sob with grief and gratitude. (The cupcake is delicious, and Phichit is very understanding.)

_Katsuki Yuuri splits with coach Celestino Cialdini, leaving his future in the sport uncertain, reports commentator Hisashi Morooka._

Yuuri doesn’t see Celestino much after that, choosing to stick to the rink’s public skate times. He doesn’t have the money anymore to book private time on the ice, so he skates idly between couples on dates and parents with their children, doing a spin or a jump as the spirit moves him, which isn’t often. More frequently he just _skates,_ going forward in an endless loop around the rink until the cold gets to him.

One day, bored with himself, he changes his routine. The ice is relatively empty that day, and he has the space to really flex. He finds himself in the starting pose of a program he knows as well as he possibly can without ever having skated it before, and by the time he finishes he’s panting and the closest to happy he’s been since his sister had called him about Vicchan. He needs to find a new coach, he needs to finish his degree, he needs to pack up his life to move back home to Hasetsu, but skating Viktor Nikiforov’s program brings him joy, and he soaks it up like a dehydrated sponge.

Phichit hugs him tight the day he leaves for the airport, not even trying to pretend he’s not crying into Yuuri’s hair. “You’ll be so good,” he says, clutching at Yuuri. “Yuuri, you’ll find another coach and you’ll be so good, and I can’t wait to see it.”

Yuuri squeezes his best friend just as tightly. “You’re going to be amazing next season,” he says, tears thickening his own voice. “Thank you for believing in me. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

“Good thing you won’t be without me,” Phichit says firmly. “We’ll call and we’ll text and I’ll see you on the Grand Prix circuit in the fall. We’re going to be best friends forever.”

Yuuri laughs wetly. “Forever.”

And then Phichit lets him go, and Yuuri gets into a cab and leaves Detroit and Celestino behind him.

He has a lot of time to think on the flight, and he makes a list of potential coaches to reach out to once the season is properly over, prioritizing the ones who didn’t have skaters at Sochi and therefore couldn’t have seen his shame. No pictures from the banquet seem to have hit the press or the Internet in the months since, for which he can only be grateful, but he’ll have to tell whoever he signs with what happened. Yuuri wavers and then adds Chris’ coach to the list; that man must have seen everything that happened, but on the other hand, he represents _Chris,_ who was up there with him and doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects. Clearly they’re doing something right.

Hasetsu is somehow just the same as he left it and completely different at the same time. Yuuri revels in the familiarity and saves the differences for when he needs them, and he skates _Stammi Vicino_ for Yuuko his first night back. She’s appropriately thrilled, and he can’t even find it in himself to be annoyed that her daughters watched too. It feels good to perform for an audience, after months of just skating for himself.

At least, he doesn’t mind until the video goes viral. Then he minds a _lot._

_is this the end of the world yet,_ he texts Phichit. Phichit sends back several gifs of people and cats hugging and the word _no._ Yuuri turns off his phone.

At least he’s proven he can skate, he tells himself as he does leg exercises on a bench at the back of the onsen. Maybe a coach will see it and reach out to him. (Unlikely, given the weight he’s gained, but Yuuri can hope.) More likely every coach he contacts in April and May will laugh him off the phone. A desperate Viktor impersonator? Hardly appealing as a student.

Maybe he should just go coachless. Skaters have done it before, so it’s not without precedent. Yuuri is far enough away from Celestino now to see all the ways he and the coach weren’t a good fit, and he can honestly say he thinks he’s better off alone than with Ciao Ciao. Yuuri has always been self-motivated, and the way he skated _Stammi Vicino_ just proves that. He can choreograph his own programs, or hire a choreographer (with what money, he asks himself), and see where that gets him. Maybe Phichit’s right. Maybe he will be okay going it alone.

(In the end, of course, he doesn’t have to.

_“Yuuri! Starting today, I’m your coach. I’ll get you to the Grand Prix Final!”)_

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/thewalrus_said) or [Tumblr](http://thewalrus-said.tumblr.com)!


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